At Common Street Spiritual Center we are cultivating a pluralistic community in which members have a rich diversity of beliefs. We each have unique backgrounds, experiences, callings, and perspectives. Therefore, our beliefs are different. We are a community that not only accepts this kind of difference, we celebrate it!
Below please find several belief statements from members of our community. We hope that you find them as inspiring as we do!
Laura E. Hake
This I believe: I am not separate
CSSC SUNDAY CIRCLE, 5-10-20
I look out the window and I see precious new green leaves and I know I am breathing with them. Deep into my lungs, belly expanding pulling in the oxygen produced by the dance between green and sunlight. My exhale, in turn, is taken in by these leaves and through this same green-sunlight dance is turned into sugar that powers the plant, all plants and thus ultimately me. I know that the cells of these plants, and all of the beings living around me, have most of the same molecules, biochemical processes. Our cells are built from the same building blocks. Our DNA code contains the same molecules, is copied and decoded using the same mechanisms. We share the same ancestor – that began as a single cell. These tiny beings started us all, and remain key components of our multicellular metabolisms. Nitrogen fixing bacteria allow plants to obtain a critical nutrient, we require the microbes in and on our bodies to obtain critical nutrients and protect us from other enterprising tiny beings.
Not only is the animate interconnected, they are deeply intertwined with the supposed inanimate….
Life requires elements taken directly from Earth’s crust and atmosphere – carbon, oxygen, calcium, potassium, phosphorous, magnesium, nitrogen. Those first, tiniest cells that could reproduce themselves arose from an interplay of energy and chemicals and minerals. Earth fostered life with a magnetic field and gravity that maintain a force field that blocks strong radiation and holds an atmosphere like a second skin. As life developed, it changed Earth chemistry, creating more molecules that then fed life. Once life occurs, it keeps occurring. On and on- complexifying. Intimately interconnected with everything.
I am looking out the window, taking in the contrast of the new red leaves of crab apple against the new green leaves of Maple, considering, feeling, our breath connection. Our biological connection. Our connection through life. A thin thin thin filament of light, closer to me, catches my eye. Glistening, moving- light dancing up and down with the wind. A spider web – illuminating for me the interconnection. Those invisible not-really-invisible threads and connections between all living beings, and ‘inanimate’ Earth.
This I believe: I am actively interconnected with Earth and my deepest peace is in this awareness. My ground is in this awareness. I am not separate.
Jen Kurz
This I believe: there is an innate power within us to heal
CSSC SUNDAY CIRCLE, 5-10-20
I believe we are all connected, and there is an innate power within us to heal. I believe humanity will rise and adapt, as long as we believe and work together. Not through luck or magic, but focused energy and will. In my yoga study, I learned that controlling the constant fluctuations of the mind, becoming fully self-realized, requires constant practice, restraint and focus. I can imagine that fulling letting go of the fluctuating perceptions, emotions, desires, sensations, and negative thoughts, may be an answer to finding peace, a respite from suffering. Turning inward and finding our strength is first. Not to find isolation, fear, anger, or sadness. But to find love, gratitude, compassion. Meditation, a great way to repair the bodily ailments from the chronic stress response, is not the only answer. We also need, perhaps, the thinking mind to create and adapt during this time in order to get well again. Maybe I should forgive my inner voice, or self, or spirit, for the difficulty I often have in my own meditation practice. Because I have been thinking a lot. I have an idea that may work for integrative, functional, restorative pain care, in a time where a remarkable thing is in happening in healthcare, as in every aspect of society: the virtual transformation. I have a plan that could really work, and brings me hope. Poet John Milton said, “The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.” I believe we choose our fate, and whether we hope or despair, adapt or surrender, survive or die, it is in our power.
Balance is key to health. For most of us, fortunately, born comparatively healthy in a country rich in resources, health and wellness might be really simple: find the balance of nutrition, exercise, and sleep. The mind is what we have to work on to really get there. The mind is everything. It holds on to trauma and fear, clings to desires, and directs our behavior every moment.
I love the phrase, “Attention is Love.” Love and attention – the essential need beyond what’s physical. How we direct our attention during this screen pandemic time is everything now. We need to lift each other up constantly. We need to give. We can’t do it alone. Humans have evolved from the sea as the brightest, most creative animals on earth because of our ability to connect with each other. With the same realizations of life’s purpose, the same deeply, inherent human desire to last forever, to give and receive love, and to hope — miracles happen all the time.
The mind receives and directs every single part of our bodily experience. “You are what you think” are ancient, well-worn words, imagined from the beginning of the human experience. The mind is consciousness, life, spirit, soul, energy, love, GOD. There are so many words for the same thing, which, in the end, words can’t describe. But it is still too easy to forget. We forget who we are, what are purpose is, what’s most important. What makes us wake up every morning to another day? The hope of change? More moments to live? The hope of more experiences, even when the suffering seems unbearable? Of course I believe God is in me, is me, is in every living thing I observe. I feel it every morning in the bright songs of the birds at my feeder. The spring buds about to bloom. I feel it in the sun, wind, and rain. In the hope and anguish of the masked faces I pass. We all must feel it, and pay attention.
COVID-19 is Nature’s loudest message yet, hitting us deeply on a personal and global level at once, forcing us to rethink and reset our lives forever. What is happening may make us feel small, powerless, insignificant. It is incomprehensible. But I believe there is an amazing potential in us, a greater purpose to suffering. Holocaust survivor, Victor Frankl, stated, ”Man is not diminished by suffering, but by suffering without meaning.” The ubiquitous pain happening around me as I write this does not go unobserved. As a pain doctor waiting for the likely flood of endlessly suffering patients in the post-surge period, I have had the luxury of not being deployed on the front-lines. I feel guilty about it sometimes, as I feel guilty to have, perhaps, an unfair share of blessings – health, family, and love – which I need daily to stay strong. But we all have to stay strong, to help others.
I believe in the messages of courage, generosity and love, not greed, fear, and hate. It’s never me, myself, and I. It is We. Let us tear down all the walls and make sure they never threaten us again. Let us deny the real root fear, beyond death – the root fear of being alone. The fear of nothingness. Because as long as there is love, and life on this planet, we are never alone. Perhaps, as one silver lining, we are starting to see how interdependent we really are – to every single person and every living thing.
Enobong Etteh
This I believe: finding internal space is the most important resource I have
CSSC SUNDAY CIRCLE, 5-10-20
I believe that finding internal space is the most important resource I have available to me. I remember as a child asking myself the question, “Where am I?” It was a playful yet existential question, one that attempted to locate not a geographic position, but some essential spiritual location. “Where am I?” I attempted to triangulate the position of that small piece that could be called “me” within the geography of my body. Where was I? Was I in between my ears, somewhere amidst flowing thoughts? Was I in my eyes, and the objects they fixated upon? Or was I in my left arm, my pointer finger, my big toe? If I focused my attention on any of these areas for long enough, I could come to feel that the essence of “I am here.”
Later, as an adult I was exposed to the practice of Buddhist meditation. The aim of this practice, in simplest terms, is to transcend the ego and experience an expansive space of nothingness. I recall Monday nights in the meditation room at the Spiritual Center and the awkwardness I felt as I opened my eyes to stare at the other people in the room, who were likely well on their way to Nirvana while I struggled to quiet my mind. It took a great amount of time for me to relinquish control and find a space of mental silence. When I finally entered the space, I could feel my center of gravity shift. I was no longer in my eyes, gazing outwardly and judging my experience. I had dropped into a dark, bottomless cavern, somewhere in my abdomen, suspended only by my breath.
There are so many different ways of dropping into the awareness of the body, and meditation is only one of them. In my vocal practice, I have been working with a mentor to explore techniques for connecting into primal expression. What is ‘primal expression’ you may ask? When a baby is born, they have this immense capacity to scream and to cry out for nurture and support. We are all born with these immense and expansive voices, and we are totally unselfconscious in expressing ourselves. Over time, however, we develop patterns of constriction and contraction in our bodies, and these patterns limit our expression. We become ashamed of our voices and afraid to speak our truth. It’s not our fault though. The body naturally holds onto emotion and information, which can accumulate much like pollution in a river, blocking the flow of our primal scream. As an artist and as a singer, so much of my work centers around being a channel of emotion and divine inspiration. Therefore doing the work to clear space within my body helps to free the emotional and spiritual channels of my expression.
With the help of my mentor I’ve developed this mantra for my embodied vocal practice: “I am experiencing the joy of being here, a channel, through which life flows authentically to express the beauty of humanity.” This mantra reminds me to stay present, and that my ego is less important than the life and light that flows through me. In all of my existence, my experience, and my creation, I am just a conduit for the presence of God’s love. I believe that finding internal space for that love to flow is the most important resource I have available to me.